Chevy harkens back to a time when women were things

Chevy used the above last month as a billboard to celebrate last month’s Woodward Dream Cruise classic-car event. But if you missed it you can get your own copy at the company’s online store.

Ah, yes. The good old days. Back before the voting rights act and when you could still legally pay women less for doing the same work. Also, there were more Polack jokes. It’s been so long since I heard one of those. And carmakers didn’t have to add all those pesky (and expensive!) car safety features like … seat belts.

Can I get my money back from GM? And I don’t mean the bailout “repayment” they made by borrowing money from the US government to payback the US government.

Via AdFreak

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GM is so inept it can’t even sell a Hummer

It took some time but Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines Co. finally realized what a bad idea buying Hummer would be. Yesterday the Chinese company announced it was pulling its offer to purchase the brand. From the start, the attempt to dump Hummer has been another testament to the company’s ineptitude. GM began trying to sucker someone into paying for the brand in June of 2008 – when gas was averaging $4.10 a gallon.

The Hummer’s greatest success may be as a metaphor for the past decade. It was a bloated, self-indulgent vehicle with no purpose other than to say, “Look how much debt I can take on just to show off how much debt I can take on.”* It proclaimed a belief that markets never go bad, in this case that gas will always be cheap. However it isn’t much of a stretch to say a similar belief permeated the minds who thought real estate could only gain in value.

The Atlantic is floating the scary idea that Hummer may not yet be dead and that someone may yet come along and revive the monster. Get the pitchforks and torches! Let us storm the castle and cut off the beast’s head and drive a stake through its transmission! For capitalism’s sake, follow me!

See also Hummer, slang meaning of.

*I know there are farmers and others who actually used the damn thing for work purposes, they are exempt from this metaphor.

Domino’s realizes it makes really bad pizza

Did you know Domino’s makes lousy pizza? While this is well known throughout the rest of the nation it seems to have just become known to those at Domino’s HQ. (Only possible explanation: The execs make too much money to eat their own product.)

For a while the company tried — and failed — to make up for this by offering its product in other forms (Bread sticks! Bread bowls! Dessert Pizza!).

Now it is facing the issue head-on by saying anything that might have gone wrong is all in the past.

I love the way the execs talk about how upset they are about everyone saying the crust tastes like cardboard. They never actually apologize for making lousy pizza or explain why it happened.

Best example is this quote from company prez Patrick Doyle: “Some people didn’t give us credit for the taste of our product. That’s what we’re fixing.”

What the hell does that mean? They’re fixing people not giving them credit?

Then there’s the head chef saying, “It hit you in the heart. This is what I’ve been doing for 25 years now.” Which begs the question – Why are you still employed?

The company seems to have copied the entire ad from another Michigan based firm – GM. Like GM’s classic weasel words mea culpa, this one starts with a call to the old days when the firm was great. Except in Domino’s case the firm was never great. It was (and is) big and profitable. But it has always been known for making a product was cheap and vaguely edible, a boon to students everywhere. Harking back to that is just bizarre.

The CMO talks about how they couldn’t just tinker but had to start over from the beginning. Starting over means including such innovative things as garlic, oregano and basil. WOW!!! How the hell did they think of this?

This is all part of a classic PR strategy of immediately saying the problem is in the past even if it’s the first time it has ever been mentioned. This approach was best summed up by that great business writer Christopher Marlowe. In his play The Jew Of Malta the character Barabas brushes away any insinuation he has done wrong saying, “But that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead.”

10 Worst Marketing Blunders of 2009

1) NBC GOES ALL LENO ALL THE TIME

Edsel … New Coke … Lenovision.

NBC has joined the immortals of marketing stupidity. This year the molting peacock network and president Jeff “Have They Fired Me Yet?” Zucker decided to turn five of the primest pieces of prime-time real estate — the hour between 10 and 11 PM from Monday through Friday — into the Jay Leno hour.

The result? A 28% drop in viewership (through mid-November). This has not only killed network revenues but done in affiliates who have no lead-in for their late news casts.

Despite this, Jeff “10% Of Americans Are Unemployed and I’m Not?” Zucker recently said that all is going according to plan. “Right now, in terms of its performance on the television network, at NBC, in terms of ratings it’s doing exactly what we thought it would do.” Comcast recently bought NBC in what must have been an attempt to copy the government’s cash for clunkers program. Comcast shareholders can now only hope they are being lied to. The worst case scenario is that Mr. Z believes what he is saying.

On the plus side:

1. It is now possible to buy every ad slot during the Leno show for less than the cost of a house in Detroit.
2. The federal witness protection program is using guest slots to hide people.

2) TIGER, TIGER BURNING BRIGHT

(Originally #9 — Who knew?)

Because I have a really limited imagination I thought the big celeb marketing mishap story of the year would be Michael Vick’s failed attempt to become a spokesperson for PETA. Then along came Tiger who prefers women with bad nose jobs to the Swedish bikini model he is actually married to. The story broke on Nov. 27th, when Mrs. Woods apparently decided to prove her own golfing expertise. This was unfortunate for Accenture which two days earlier had kicked off its annual Tiger campaign. A print ad which ran in the Nov. 30th Wall Street Journal featured Tiger Woods walking in the rough under the headline: “The road to high performance isn’t always paved.” And watch out for the trees and fire hydrants. Accenture has since declawed its Tiger connection.

UPDATE: File this under “Pull the other one, it’s made of wood.”

“We decided several months ago to discontinue Gatorade Tiger Focus, along with some other products to make room for our planned series of innovative products in 2010,” Gatorade spokeswoman Jennifer Schmit said in an e-mailed statement.

3) BANKERS CUT BONUSES, INCREASE SALARY & BLAME JESUS

First the banking industry made a big show of cutting the obscene bonuses it was paying itself for going on the dole. Meanwhile they hoped no one would notice the allegedly eliminated bonuses were now being paid as plain old salary.

But wait … that’s not all!

Apparently still feeling that their efforts to destroys the economy were still underappreciated, bankers started claiming Jesus wanted them to do it.

“The injunc­tion of Jesus to love others as our­selves is an endorse­ment of self-​interest,” Goldman’s [inter­na­tional adviser Brian] Grif­fiths said Oct. 20, his voice echo­ing around the gold-​mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s finan­cial dis­trict. “We have to tol­er­ate the inequal­ity as a way to achiev­ing greater pros­per­ity and oppor­tu­nity for all.”

How much LSD do you have to take to interpret Scripture this way? However much it is, it is certainly being passed out at all the best financial institutions. Two weeks later, Barclays CEO John Varley spoke at the venerable St. Martin-in-the-Fields and tried to wrap the Bible around his bonus.

“There is no conflict between doing business in an ethical and responsible way and making money. We make our biggest contribution to society by being good at what we do. Profit is not satanic.”

I guess it all depends on who gets to determine how we define ethical and responsible. Perhaps Varley could have gotten away with this specious argument had he not added this gloss to the text after the service: “Is Christianity and banking compatible? Yes. And is Christianity and fair reward compatible? Yes.” (Not a good sign when a banker can’t even get his verb and subject numbers to add up.) Hey John, can we parse the word “fair” for a moment?

I believe the renowned 20th century theologian Ray Price put it best when he asked, “Would Jesus wear a Rolex on His television show?”

4: GM EXPLAINS AWAY ITS “LITTLE PROBLEM”

In the face of the greatest single corporate collapse in the history of the world, GM rolled out an ad that inadvertently explains the company’s failure.

It is a veritable symphony of weasel words.

Let’s be completely honest, no company wants to go through this.

By the end of that first sentence it is clear this ad has no intention whatsoever of living up to that initial clause. You can tell because the final pronoun is never made specific. That “this” covers billions of sins. It implies we all know what has happened without saying what that was. It is everything to everyone and thus means nothing. Is “this” an utter failure of leadership? Or is it an inability to have even the vaguest understanding of the needs of the marketplace? Sadly, I suspect “this” is “an economic calamity no one could have foreseen” – the preferred phrase of everyone from Alan Greenspan to, well, the Detroit-based car makers. There is no taking responsibility anywhere in this ad just as there has been no taking responsibility at GM for decades. (Read more here)

5) VOGUE: BLACKFACE IS THE NEW BLACK

The October issue of French Vogue had a photo spread of the very Caucasian Lara Stone painted head to toe in dark make-up. Vogue went with the old “I’m sorry if you found my words insulting” defense and told the Daily Mail “it was unaware it had caused offence, but said it could not give any further comment.” (Worth noting: Italian Vogue’s issue for the same month was filled with actual Black women.) In a keeping up with the KKK move inflight magazine EasyJet ran a photo spread featuring brooding generic models dressed in black POSING IN FRONT OF BERLIN’S HOLOCAUST MONUMENT.

Fortunately for me marketers just can’t seem to figure out that Nazi = Bad. This years examples:

• A wax museum opening in Thailand put up posters of mass murder Hitler with a slogan that said: “Hitler is not dead.”
• Two German coffee companies ran (and then pulled) an ad campaign featuring a slogan almost identical to one used at Buchenwald.
• Red Bull marketing mag calls Werner von Braun a “hero”

LATE BREAKING STUPIDITY UPDATE: NYT runs gift guide with special section devoted to:

“Somali fashion, do-it-yourself henna kits, children’s books that draw inspiration from the lives of Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor: it’s not hard to find gifts created for and by people of color this holiday season.” (emphasis added)

Why it’s almost like they’re real people!

6) CHOCOLATES SHAPED LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA & MORE

CandyExpress said its commemorative Barack Obama heads would only be available for a limited time, unfortunately it wasn’t limited enough. Off the top of my head I would say there are three things Mr. Obama should not be used to advertise: Chocolate, fried chicken (a German company did it), watermelon (that’s a yet). However, the Russians came up with a bunch of things I’d never thought of. They used our President to advertise a tanning salon, a dental clinic and pre-packaged ice cream with the slogan “Everyone’s talking about it: dark inside white!” The bars have a chocolate-flavored center embedded in a layer of vanilla.

However these are just idiocy, the sheer stupidity award goes to Beanie Baby maker Ty. First they decided to sell two new dolls named Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia. Then they tried to deny they were named after America’s First Kids.

“[We] chose the dolls’ names because “they are beautiful names,” not because of any resemblance to President Obama’s daughters, said spokeswoman Tania Lundeen. “There’s nothing on the dolls that refers to the Obama girls,” Lundeen said. “It would not be fair to say they are exact replications of these girls. They are not.”

Sorry dear, but in order to get away with a lie like that you have to be a bank.

7) STUPIDITY? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT

The word of the year really should have been app. The ubiquitous iPhone has spawned an industry of companies trying to market their wares by providing allegedly useful and/or humorous apps. To paraphrase Pogo, this confronted Pepsi with an insurmountable opportunity. The company released an app called Before You Score for its Mountain Dew AMP brand. The app gives you 24 different types of women (sorority girl, etc.) and offers “appropriate” pick-up lines for each type and other similar information.

Not to be outdone, LawFirms.com, a legal referral site, decided to get attention with a campaign featuring the (fictitious) app iCoyote. It “packs all of the features of a real immigrant smuggler into the iPhone. Using GPS, navigate through the patrol packed desert without worrying about that pesky Border Patrol.”

The app included a variety of features such as:

• iWife. It “will take care of finding marriage prospects for you. Aggregating and analyzing data from a variety of online sources [to] match you up with only the most promising US Citizen candidates.”
• iLawyer. “Homeland Security is Cracking down. Not to worry. With iLawyer, you can find an attorney to convince the immigration court to grant Asylum Protection. A Green Card is a finger swipe away.”
• Weather Monitors. “The desert can get hot, and trying to cross it when it’s 120 degrees is not fun. Get up-to-date weather forecasts to pick the right time and ensure your trip to the US is comfortable and fun-packed.”
• City Statistics. “San Antonio? Albuquerque? Tucson? San Diego? Not sure which is best? Get unemployment statistics, current average wages, cost of living expenses and more. Get the job you want, at the right wage, tax free!”

8 AMERICAN GIRL SELLS “HOMELESS GIRL” DOLL

Your child can learn that the homeless are just like real people once you spend $95 to buy her a “less fortunate” playmate for her other American Girl doll(s). The latest addition to the American Girl line of how-do-you-justify-it-ly expensive dolls is Gwen Thompson. Ms. Thompson

and her mother Janine fell on hard times when her father lost his job; they later lost the house as they were unable to keep up payments. Soon after, Gwen’s father left them and they became homeless the fall before the start of the book’s events. Initially, Gwen’s mother has them live in their car until the winter comes; she then takes them to Sunrise House, a place for homeless women and children. Sunrise House helps them get on their feet and eventually get a new apartment.

And should you also want to teach the kid that the disabled are people too, American Girl also sells a wheelchair for $30.

9) KFC UNDERESTIMATES OPRAH’S POPULARITY

Why would you pay to have Oprah endorse your product if you didn’t know what the result be? In May the chain formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken paid Ms. Winfrey to discuss its new grilled chicken on her show. (This is part of an ongoing effort to rebrand KFC as someplace that serves something besides FC. By the time it’s over KFC will be Rhode Island Clam Shack. But I digress.) In addition to giving product to her audience — and how pissed were they? Other folks got a new car and they get a food experiment – viewers could go to a website and download a coupon for up to four free two-piece chicken meals with two sides and a biscuit. If there’s one thing the US loves more than Oprah, it’s Oprah and free food.

You’ll never guess what happened. OK, so maybe you will.

Several bajillion people downloaded the coupon and sprinted to the nearest KFC. Well, the food disappeared faster than a dollar bill on the floor of the Senate. As a result somefranchisees started refusing to accept the coupon, some told people the promotion was over for the day, some quickly pointed to the “while supplies last” clause, the more creative said that coupons with barcode numbers ending in “1234” are not valid. Look closely at the barcode below to see what that meant.

All this brought new meaning to the chain’s horrible new tagline: “Unthink What You Thought About KFC.”

Another chain, El Pollo Loco, moved smart and fast and sent out a twitter saying they’d accept the coupons on Mother’s Day. Soon Oprah was having to apologize for the stupidity and KFC issued rain checks to the disgruntled.

All of which goes to prove that whatever you have to pay Oprah, the ROI is REAL!

10) (tie) BLACKWATER, NIGERIA & SWINE INDUSTRY LAUNCH REBRANDING EFFORTS

• In an attempt to change all the nasty connotations that go along with being mercenaries, Blackwater Worldwide changed its name to Xe. That’s pronounced zee, as in “zee idiots in marketing thought of it.”

Blackwater president Gary Jackson said in a memo to employees the new name reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security. “The volume of changes over the past half-year have taken the company to an exciting place and we are now ready for two of the final, and most obvious changes,” Jackson said in the note.

That exciting place seems to include a lot of lawsuits.

• Tired of being thought of as the world’s foremost manufacturer of email con jobs, Nigeria decided to tackle it’s massive corruption problems with that most modern approach: Marketing. Its new slogan: At least we’re not AIG.

“At international airports, in trains, in shopping malls, and almost everywhere, every Nigerian is a marked person,” Dora Akunyili, information minister and self-styled chief image maker said at the launch of the re-branding campaign this week. “We are pulled aside for questioning. We are seen as potential drug pushers or fraudsters. We are unfortunately denied the benefit of the doubt.”

• Swine flu is no laughing matter. Especially if you’re the American Pork Association. They went into overdrive screaming about how it was hurting their sales and enlisted Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin who constantly referred to the “so-called swine flu.” Unfortunately humor trumps branding every time. Thus we got headlines like:
  • Pork Industry Has Beef With Swine Flu (NPR)
  • Swine flu not kosher in Israel (Reuters)

“We will call it Mexico flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman, a black-garbed Orthodox Jew, told a news conference Monday, assuring the Israeli public that authorities were prepared to handle any cases.

CIO writer and friend Al Sacco came up with this: Swine flu isn’t a scary enough name. It needs a slogan, too: “Pork Plague, the (Other) White Death,” for example.

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS

AMAZON DELISTS GAY AND LESBIAN BOOKS

The online retailer blamed an “employee in France” for a “software glitch” which oddly delisted gay and lesbian themed books from its search listings. (Example: Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain vanished, but not her book The Shipping News in which all the sex is hetero.)

Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as “adult,” the source said.

CRAIGSLIST CEO SAYS SITE HAS NO SEX RELATED ADS

“I would not describe any section of our site as ’sex related,’ ” [Craigslist CEO Jim] Buckmaster wrote in response to a series of e-mailed questions from the Globe. He acknowledged that Craigslist offers an “erotic services” section that should not include more than “legitimate escort services, sensual massage, exotic dancers, etc.,” but said that offers to exchange sexual favors for money are “strictly prohibited” and removed from the site.

SPECIAL PENGUIN OF IRONY CITATION:

THE WISCONSIN TOURISM FOUNDATION
had to change its name to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin

BONUS: A few other totally wrong products from the year

• Hanah Montana brand Cherries,
• Linger, mints for your lady bits all but guaranteed to cause a yeast infection.
• Godfather-branded Italian organic vodka
• Starbucks instant coffee – the exact opposite of everything the brand stands for.

GM CEO quits. Does that count as job creation?

Fritz Henderson, the man with the 2nd least desirable job in the US*, has quit or been pushed after failing to turn around the troubled automaker in less than 6 months.

What? I don’t really know. He or an underling managed to screw up the sale of Opal, Saab, Saturn and any other part of the company vaguely attractive enough for someone to spend money on. Plus, lets face it, Fritz is not a really marketable name.

Company officials described the decision for Henderson to resign at "mutual." I have to wonder if some of that mutuality had to do with Fritz screaming, “Free at last! Free at last! God almighty I’m free at last.” as he left the office today.

It is worth noting that the people who hired Henderson did so with very real doubts. Speaking last month Steven Rattner, head of the Obama auto task force, had this piece of high praise for Henderson “He’s shown that he can manage.” In what has to be one of the least surprising opinions ever offered on the auto industry, Rattner said GM and Chrysler “were some of the worst-run companies I’ve ever seen in my life.”

 

*1 = US President

GM bankruptcy ad is a symphony of weasel words

In the face of the greatest single corporate collapse in the history of the world, GM rolled out an ad that inadvertently explains the company’s failure.

It is a veritable symphony of weasel words.

Let’s be completely honest, no company wants to go through this.

By the end of that first sentence it is clear this ad has no intention whatsoever of living up to that initial clause. You can tell because the final pronoun is never made specific. That “this” covers billions of sins. It implies we all know what has happened without saying what that was. It is everything to everyone and thus means nothing. Is “this” an utter failure of leadership? Or is it an inability to have even the vaguest understanding of the needs of the marketplace? Sadly, I suspect “this” is “an economic calamity no one could have foreseen” – the preferred phrase of everyone from Alan Greenspan to, well, the Detroit-based car makers. There is no taking responsibility anywhere in this ad just as there has been no taking responsibility at GM for decades.

But we’re not witnessing the end of the American car,

We’re witnessing the rebirth of the American car.

The conflation of America and GM is offered as an explanation as to why the US citizen is now on the hook for $50+ billion dollars. GM = American car and of course we need to save American car. This neatly sidesteps two key facts: 1) Ford has somehow managed to avoid contributing to the financial debacle that is the US government; and 2) Honda, Toyota and all those other companies who build and sell cars in the US are just as “American” as GM. Actually by the very fact they haven’t required our tax dollars to pay for them to go out of business they are, in my eyes, far more patriotic than GM. They are providing jobs and generating funds for the nation and its citizens.

General Motors needs to start over in order to get stronger.

You can’t argue with the need to start over. It is a safe, bland phrase which appeals to the charitable side in everyone. After all, who hasn’t had problems and who doesn’t believe in a second chance? And we are offered no option but the opinion that GM will get stronger. This is an emotional appeal specifically aimed at diverting attention from the fact that this is a business, not your neighbor or nephew. Any discussion of capitalism and free markets is shunted aside. This isn’t about dollars or stock price or the rich getting richer, no this is about helping someone who is down on his luck.

And lest we forget how dazzling and brilliant that friend once was:

There was a time when eight different brands made sense, not anymore.

There was a time when our cost structure could compete world-wide, not anymore.

Note the use of the phrase “There was a time.” The rhetoric seeks to use past successes as another way of avoiding responsibility. This is nothing more than a badly bloated rewriting of “Mistakes were made.” This is followed up quickly by a blizzard of meaningless business jargon and words that imply much but mean nothing.

Reinvention is the only way we can fix this and fix it, we will.

So here’s what the new GM is going to be:

Fewer, stronger brands.

Fewer, stronger models.

Greater efficiencies.

Better fuel economy.

And new technologies.

Leaner, greener, faster, smarter.

Reinvention! Yes that’s the ticket!

Well, actually what GM needs is the corporate equivalent of putting senior management up against the wall. To actually re-invent the company everyone associated with the ancient regime would need to be replaced. The successor executives are about as likely to break from past failed policies as Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner. Since I am paying for this fiasco can I make a suggestion: Jim Stengel’s stepping down from P&G, can we put him in charge? If not Stengel – and I would not wish this job on anyone – then how about someone else who has experience running a successful business?

Having invoked the empty but pretty idea of re-invention the ad descends into a staccato barrage of lovely sounding words and phrases signifying nothing: Fewer, stronger, greater, better, leaner, greener, faster, smarter!

The ad ends with triumphal horn blast

This is not about going out of business, this is about getting down to business.

Because the only chapter we’re focused on is Chapter 1.

The first sentence is straight from the handbook of Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen who penned all those pretty reversible quotes like “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” It is a call to action that requires no action. A promise without commitment. The final words are a smug wink and a nudge, an effort to let you know how clever they – or the ad writers – still are. Note the unspoken play on Chapter 11.

At a time when what the company and all three of its remaining customers need are a few simple declarative sentences we get more of the usual: Pretty smoke and brilliant mirrors. GM still wants us to believe its management knows what is best for the company. I didn’t mind that claim nearly as much when they weren’t using my money to make it.

I am clearly not the only person to feel this way. Here is the version of the GM ad I would have made if I had the video skills I clearly don’t.

"GM shares slump as bankruptcy fear grows"

I hadn’t realized they still had lower to go. Hmmm, as of noon they are at $1.65 – down 17.5% Go figure.

US nationalizes Chrysler, GM auto warranties

From The Wall Street Journal:

To assure consumers reluctant to buy GM or Chrysler cars, the government plans to take the unusual step of guaranteeing all warrantees on new cars from either company. These guarantees would lapse back to the companies once they return to health.

• For those of you on the conservative side of things: Can you imagine what it will take to get your warrantee covered by the Feds?
• For the liberals: They’ll pay to repair the car but not the owner?

Coming next: “Free bailout with every purchase!”

Steve Hartley nails it: “GM = Government Motors. What could go wrong?”

Toyota reports first loss in 70 years — They made money in 1946?

Toyota — which is the best-run company in the world that isn’t P&G — yesterday announced it will have an operating loss for 2008 of $1.66 billion (or about what GM loses every week). They also announced this was the first time in 70 years it  lost money.

Toyota, which started in business as a loom maker, began making trucks and passenger cars in 1937. Its first and only operating loss came the following year, before it started reporting formal results in 1941.

Other people immediately asked the same question I did: How did they manage to report a profit (or break even) in 1945-47?

Top 10 Marketing Blunders of 2008

Yeah, there’s a lot more than 10 here. What can I say? It was a very good year for very bad things.

(PS: If you liked this would you mind going here and voting for it on Digg?)

GRAND PRIZE FOR SUSTAINED ORGANIZATIONAL EFFORT

(tie)

The John McCain Presidential Campaign

• “Our economy, I think, is still — the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
• Has no idea how many houses he (or his wife) owns.
• Picks Sara Palin, the Broad to Nowhere who couldn’t find Russia or Africa on a map.
• Campaign adviser and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina says Palin couldn’t run a major corporation.
• Campaign adviser and former senator Phil Gramm says Americans are whiners about economic problems.
• “Shutting down” his campaign to fix the bailout.
• “Lipstick on a pig”
• Egregious attack on Dungeons & Dragons that clearly cost him the election. (OK, maybe not so much the last one).

GM

• June: with gas heading to $4-a-gallon, company announces it is trying to sell the Hummer brand. As of today, sale is still pending.
• August: with gas at $4-a-gallon, company announces it will take the bold move of investing “$500 million to build a new fuel-efficient, small car the automaker says will show it can make money in head-to-head competition with its Japanese rivals as it fights to return to profitability.”
• October: Asks Treasury Dept. for $10 billion to pay for proposed merger with Chrysler
• Early November: car company that already isn’t selling cars argues it can’t file for bankruptcy because “people won’t buy cars from a bankrupt car company.”
• Late November: leads troika of Detroit CEOs to DC to ask for taxpayer money to balance the books. Each flies in on wings of attitude and three separate corporate jets.
• December: runs weasel-word mea culpa in Automotive News: “While we’re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you. At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs. And, we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today’s globally competitive industry.“

Runners Up

1. Ford features “Space Oddity” — a song about astronaut suicide — in new car campaign.
2. Framingham State College  uses the word blah 137 times in a 312-word fundraising letter.
3. Disney (multiple entries): Bans kids from DisneyWorld restaurant; Changes “It’s A Small World” to “A Salute to All Nations, But Mostly America”; and Sells “High School Musical” panties for tween girls with the phrase “Dive In” on them.
4. Woolworths (UK) launches Lolita brand of beds for young girl
5. JetBlue lives up to Southwest’s parody ad by charging for pillows.
6. Russia uses smiling kids in tourism ad for war zone
7. Residents of Lesbos sue those other lesbians over brand name
8. Motrin gets headache from viral moms video
9. Butcher’s ads feature “Meat Products, Fresh Service” on naked woman
10. Hershey asks if you’ve found Mr. Goodbar

Special Jury Awards

Co-Branding That Shouldn’t Have Been

• Windows Vista toilet paper
• The Muppets appear on DVD for Law & Order: SVU
  
• Barbie® Rice Krispies® Treats
• P&G starts hip-hop record label (Bounce® and Beyonce? Jay Z and Oral B®? 50 Cent and Febreze®? Snoop Dogg and Eukanuba®? Ghostface Killah and Ghost®? Lil Wayne & Pampers®?)

The Alpha & Omega of Over-reaching

• God’s chosen racing team loses at the Indy 500
• “Pope’s Cologne Provides Solace to Grieving Widow”
• “Can Batman Teach Spiritual Truth?”
• Email service lets you taunt friends after The Rapture
• McDonalds compares Ray Kroc to Martin Luther King Jr.

Product Failure

• LifeLock ID protection service fails to protect CEO’s identity
• Anti-shark device found to attract sharks

The Penguins Of Irony “Oh NO You Din’t” Awards

• Publisher says bankruptcy puts magazine chain in “a position poised for wonderful growth
• WaMu continues to send credit card offers after going out of business

Previous years’ lists

• Top 10 from 2007
• Dozen Dumbest Press Releases from 2006
• 10 Dumbest Business Quotes from 2006

Detroit car cos. as bad at PR as they are at business

The CEOs of GM and Ford have announced they will drive from Detroit to DC for the next round of begging from Congress. Clearly this was supposed to make us forget that the Detroit Three had flown in separate private jets the last time they tried to explain why their companies were running out of money.

Instead all it has done is reminded us of this. Apparently you can’t answer a cheap shot with a cheap stunt. I particularly like the fact that the two CEOs are coming in separate cars. No car pooling for these two.

Better move would have been to simply taken a commercial flight. Or walked. I hope the press will tail both men all the way during their drive. Otherwise we might get a Rosie Ruiz situation. (Ms. Ruiz was named winner of the 1980 Boston Marathon, until it was discovered she had only run .2 of the 26.2 mile course.)

Will Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli also indulge in a little stunt driving? Unknown. What is known is that he “will not travel by corporate jet. A spokeswoman says his travel plans will remain secret for security reasons.” I have no doubt this is utter and total bullshit, but it certainly plays better than what the other two are doing.

10 things a satirist gives thanks for

1. The Bush Administration
2. GM’s “leadership” (What’s the difference between the cub scouts and GM? Adult supervision.)
3. Sarah Palin and her handlers
4. The voters of Minnesota. Jesse Ventura! Al Franken! (someone’s spiked the 10,000 lakes).
5. Jaguar Land Rover for applying for a bailout.
6. Barney Frank: “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
7. The Chicago Cubs
8. Alan Greenspan
9. The phrase “too big to fail.” Econ speak for: About to bite the dust.
10. Joe Biden: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘look, here’s what happened.’”

GM argument against bankruptcy is a car wreck

The astoundingly badly run car maker says it won’t declare chapter 11 because “people won’t buy cars from a bankrupt company.” Given that GM’s sales have dropped 45 percent over the last year, how would this be any different from the current situation?

Not surprisingly the “it’s not our fault” argument is echoed by UAW President Ron Gettelfinger: “We’re here not because of what the auto industry has done. We’re here because of what has happened to the economy.”

This would be more believable if GM had been doing well before the credit markets went to hell. Let’s remember that we’re talking about GM here and what it’s track record is like. This is a company that even when it gets a good idea goes out of its way to kill it.

Quoth this great article from the WSJ:

This situation doesn’t stem from the recent meltdown in banking and the markets. GM, Ford and Chrysler have been losing billions since 2005, when the U.S. economy was still healthy. The financial crisis does, however, greatly exacerbate Detroit’s woes. As car sales plunge — both in the U.S. and in Detroit’s once-booming overseas markets — it’s becoming nearly impossible for the companies to cut costs fast enough to keep pace with the evaporation of their revenue.

In all this lies a tale of hubris, missed opportunities, disastrous decisions and flawed leadership of almost biblical proportions. In fact, for the last 30 years Detroit has gone astray, repented, gone astray and repented again in a cycle not unlike the Israelites in the Book of Exodus.

Remember Saturn? GM started an authentically different company that attained a beloved cult-like status and then all but killed it by not letting it put out new models. Don’t even get me started about the electric car and where the company would be today if they’d kept developing that program they killed after putting $1 billion into it. And then there’s the decades of lobbying against improving mileage standards that — had they been in effect — would have also saved their asses.

GM is also arguing that it’s basically under new management and that the guys who made all those stupid decisions have been replaced. Even if this is true, then let’s hold them accountable for the stupidity just since Rick Waggoner became CEO. For the last seven years their strategy has been, “we’re going to bet it all on the short-term profits to be made from SUVs.” Thus they launched Hummer et al. I’m supposed to trust a bunch of guys who couldn’t figure out that the price of gas fluctuates? Who couldn’t figure out that there was a difference between short-term profits and long-term viability?

Let’s make one thing clear — the term “US automakers” is a misnomer. When someone says they want to “bailout the US automakers” they really mean GM. Ford has said repeatedly that they have enough credit to get through and Chrysler is no more or less a US company than Honda or Toyota. The Big Three is in fact the Incompetent One.

Wait, I will bow to the Journal on this one: they’re going with “The Detroit Three” and that works for me.

When branding goes too far: car crashes into car-themed diner

A Mercedes and a Honda collided outside Hubcaps Diner at the corner of Bonanza and Locust streets in downtown Walnut Creek, CA. The collision sent the Honda onto the sidewalk and through the glass doors of the popular breakfast spot, which is decorated with framed photographs of classic automobiles.

Via The Obscure Store & Reading Room

And speaking of car crashes, I was ecstatic to see The Treasury Department said NO! to GM’s request for up to $10 billion to finance its merger with Chrysler. They wanted you and me to pay for this idiot idea? If they can’t even afford to do the merger why do it in the first place? There is nothing about that merger that makes any sense. There will be no economies of scale — GM is already too big. It will bring nothing to the marketplace — GM is already suffering from having way too many brands that stand for absolutely nothing. I wouldn’t trust the top management of either firm to run a lemonade stand. I’d consider funding it only if they fired everyone at the top of both firms.

GM merging with Chrysler: Dumb and dumberer

What part of two wrongs don’t make a right do these people not understand?

Isn’t the idea of a merger to combine strengths? What is it that these companies combined would be able to do that they can’t do by themselves? GM already has too many brands. So it wants to add more? The nice thing about having these two merge is that it will bring together a lot of bad management and keep it away from other companies.

Further proof that irrational exuberance walks among us: General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. shares were up more than 24% each on Monday. Ford’s stock is up apparently because it had previously held merger discussions with GM. The only reason this should be a boost for Ford is the realization that it was smart enough not to merge with GM. It is astounding to see what has happened to what was once the largest and best-run company in the world.